My Angel
by BabeGirl
Summary: Steph finds a new strength when she faces the hardest day of her life.


I sat in a pew at the back of the small chapel, oversized sunglasses hiding my smeared makeup and puffy eyes. I had cried for the last two straight days. I sat alone, unable to bring myself to interact with people. The snow whirled around outside the frosty windows, a testament to his favorite season. The room was lit by over two hundred candles, each one set up by a friend or family in remembrance to the one they had lost. I was inconsolable. My friends tried to help, but their sympathy only made me remember the one I had lost. Their comforting words opened the floodgates of memories of the warm, sunny afternoons where I would pour my heart out, my head resting in his lap as we sat by our favorite lake.

The minister delivered the eulogy, and various mutual friends shared their memories. The podium stood, shimmering in the candle light. It stood against a backdrop of red velvet, his favorite colour beckoning me to stand and honor his memory. With the last ounces of strength I could muster, I pulled off the sunglasses, stood, and slowly walked to the front of the church. I paused at the casket, staring at the beautiful face I would never see smile again. I would never hear his laughter again, never see his eyes sparkle, never see his cheeks colour in perpetual embarrassment. I stood behind the podium and took a shaky breath, waiting for the words to form in my heart.

"We are all here to honor someone who touched our lives. He is someone who was always there for me, and he was the only person who truly understood me. In our last conversation, he told me that life was too precious to look at from behind a window of pain. He told me to go out and experience life; to put everything bad that had ever happened to me in a little box and seal it away and not let it ruin my chance at life. He was the person that would have come with me to experience life. No matter where I would have chosen to go, he would have been right there beside me, pushing me forward into a new adventure. He had wisdom beyond his years, but he was hiding something.

The unspoken pain that he lived with. I never knew the pain he lived through. I was so wrapped up in my own insignificant problems that I didn't even realize the depression he was spiraling into. He was screaming for someone to help him, but I was deaf to his pleas. If I had just stepped out from behind that wall of pain I had built for myself, I could have heard him and helped him. We all laid a brick in the road that brought us here today. An offhand comment, a quiet laughter, ignorance to his needs. We are all so absorbed in our lives that we never stop to look around us. We never heard his desperate begging because all we heard has his selfless compassion. He took on the burdens of our hearts, and the problems that plagued our dreams. 

We all slept easier because of his increasingly restless slumbers. Now, we stand by as he is laid to rest in an eternal slumber, finally able to be at peace. The pain that he felt because we gave it to him cannot plague him anymore. I wish it didn't have to end this way, that he could have found any other form of release, but now we all must live with our part in this. One of the brightest souls in any of our lives, taken by his own hand, darkened by the silent pain he lived in. He now lives in the arms of the angels, and I hope for nothing else then for him to find the same comfort he provided to us."

I walked back to the casket, placed a feather-light kiss on his icy lips, and walked out of the chapel into the whisper soft snow. I had said what he needed me to, guided by the piece of his soul that will never darken in my heart. I shuffled down the snowy pathway to the nearby lake. Looking out over the glassy surface, I felt the warmth of his arms around me for a brief moment before the cold encircled me again. A single tear rolled down my cheek, and a lone dove flew silently across the sky.

**A/N: I know that I never actually named who is in the coffin, but that is so you can interpret the story however you want. I didn't want to pigeon-hole the emotions. Your reviews make me want to write more, so get on that….Thanks! **

**My Angel**


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